Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Fantastic weekend up at Hatchers, Becky, Tony and I. Made every effort to get Tony hooked on rock climbing, first multi-pitch and first hand crack. woo hooo!

Sunday we devoted to peak bagging, After debating weather to go for the Pinnacle or go exploring, we opted to try a ridge traverse of the peaks in the fairangel cirque. Here they are, we went basically from the far right of the photo and descended the gully to the left of the center peak.

After gaining the ridge its mostly 4th class with exposure, we roped up for some of it, but in the end traversed to the right around the ridge and accessed a gully to the summit of the first peak.

the views were sick! walls walls everywhere!

After summiting the first peak we turned to the ridge between the two with all the towers on it, more exposed 4th class, and some very exposed moves, we turned to simulclimb after a bit as the exposure was big and the north side was wet.

we accessed the talus slope on the east face by sticking to the ridge that seperates the "tumor", more exposed 4th class and a exposed 5th class moves.

At the top.. clouds building.

looking on with aprehension of the knife edge ridge ahead...

It was airy, but took gear well.

we reached a point where we had to rappel to access a notch, and the thunderheads were nearing. Bailing was unanmaous and we made 3 60m raps into the gully to walk off. of course the rope got stuck on the first one so and I had to climb back up to the ridgeline dodging lightning again... seems to be a trend this summer..

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Billy and I set out to climb Carpethian peak near portage. Its a much sought after peak because it looks bad-ass and you can see it from all around. It also gets some of the worst weather imaginable so we jumped on the sunny sunnnyyy forecast and I took friday off of work.The plan was to summit Byron peak and traverse over. Some rock gear, lots of ice screws, bivy sacks and a tiny stove...

There is a normal route up byron that avoids most of the glacier, but we wanted to get the rope and stuff off our backs so we decided to try a more intresting glacier route which involved up to 60 degree ice climbing in spots.

once through the first icefall we saw this..the line shows the route we took, we didnt know till we were there weather it would go or not.

Views of whittier and Prince william sound came out...

on the summit of Byron with our objective a long ways away!

It was a bueatiful day, and once we figured out we couldent do it, things got more relaxed and we soaked up the sun a bit..

Heading down, Skookum and placer valleys in the background

The highlight was a tourist family who thought Billy was trying to attack them when Billy tried to give them his ice tool to take photos with on the hike out... cant got into details but yes- climbers can be very scary at the 12th hour.

Went up to Hatchers on saturday for sunny rock climbing with Jillian, great day!

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Rainy weekend, now its bueatiful out!Climbed the cooler on ptarmagin on sunday in full on clouds, and rain, and had a total blast doing it. Its the perfect climb to do solo or with a friend in a few hours from Anchorage. A quick bike in, fun snow climbing, a good summit scramble and decent scree for the descent. Snow Conditions were thin to say the least, less snow now than a month later last year.

Went back tonight with Joe, and had a blast again, way mellower many stops to goof off...Was a bueatiful night in Anchorage.. feels like fall is creeping in...Biking on the way out I was in the big ring on the sheep really getting on it.. when I look up to greet a huge bull moose with a double wheel lock up skid, made the stop about 15 feet from the tips of his enormous rack. sometimes those adrenaline shots come when you least expect it

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

With no plans had a great weekend.Solo packraft on Eagle river on saturday. Hiked to Glacier lake, paddled across then tooled around the moraine a bit.

Then headed up to Hatchers with Billy and Yvonne to try lower spire again.We got most of the way up but then hunkered down for about 3 hrs while lightening blasted around us and rain soaked us. Eventually we tried going up more but I got freaked out by numerous nearby strikes and having an ice axe on my back. We made 3 double rope raps to get down to the glacier.